On how to choose gifts that add value, hold meaning & will last the whole year

We’ve always spent a lot of time carefully choosing Christmas and Birthday gifts for our kids but I would say that as they have got older and we have become more attuned to the idea of living a less consumerist and more minimal life, we have become even more careful about giving less presents but ones that hold more meaning and value. We don’t feel that pressure to get ourselves in to debt at Christmas to buy our kids a huge number of expensive presents… and we feel more comfortable (and actually find it preferable these days) to give our children handmade or unusual gifts.

Is this excessive present buying necessary or even healthy for our kids?

There’s this enormous pressure when you’re pregnant to buy a whole list of things before your baby has even been born… and at each birthday and Christmas to buy an even bigger list of the latest developmental toys in case your child should fall behind all the other kids at playgroup! The funny thing is that young children don’t even need that many toys at all. In fact, they are less likely to focus and to learn to play effectively when they are over-stimulated and surrounded by too many things. And what they really need more than anything at that age is an adult to sit down on the floor with them and talk and interact.

Ask yourself before buying that massive list of presents whether they are really for your child or for yourself. To be honest – babies and toddlers are probably happier playing with the gift wrap and boxes than the presents themselves! I think the video below says it all >>

Presents are for special occasions, not the everyday

As a general rule, we don’t tend to buy our kids presents throughout the year – not even those little knick-knacks and other small gifts that pile up over the months – other than special occasions. Our kids learnt early on to save up their wish lists for birthdays and Christmas. Those gifts that have managed to stay on their Christmas-wish list throughout the year are definitely those that will be more greatly valued when they are eventually gifted them.

Santa always makes sure to give the kids wooden toys in their stockings; homemade sweets and chocolates and unique handmade little gifts sourced locally that they wouldn’t come across in Jumbo the following week and wonder why their elf-made gift can be found in a store. Bigger presents are always from Mama and Daddy and as we don’t have any control over what other people gift our kids (other than some helpful hints when asked for), we try to buy presents based on a (loose) set of guidelines.

Our guidelines for present-buying

We try to ensure that the presents are:

educational, or

long-lasting & eco-friendly or

functional & useful, or

handmade, or

those presents that offer some kind of unique ‘experience’.

So what fits in to these categories?

Books, books, books… you can never have enough books. Buy local, buy in your various languages and if you’re not sure what to buy, read a Top-Ten Books list online and then head over to Amazon and read the reviews to see if it is the kind of story your child would like. Picture books have always been a hit in our house; along with some sort of Christmas-themed sticker/rub-down transfer or activity book… And as your kids get older, books from specific series that they are reading are always at the top of their list.

Something that the kids NEED – this could be a new pair of boots or a pair of warm pyjamas, or an alarm clock or new lunchbox for the child who has just started school. It doesn’t matter if you would have bought them anyway – wrap them up and show your kids that even ‘necessary’ items are a privilege that some other kids are not lucky enough to get.

The kind of toys that last a lifetime (wooden blocks; puzzles; lego) or at least the whole year (such as a magazine or STEM/Crafting toy subscription)

Presents that tie in to an activity you have been doing together the previous months: if you like to spend time crafting with your children, make a dolls house with them in the preceding months and then get them some special accessories to go with your final creation. Making a project together that lasts several weeks or months is a great learning tool, as well as a good way to practice delayed gratification. We made a cardboard castle and a pirate’s ship with our son when he was three and he waited patiently for 2 months until his birthday to receive the special pirate and knight figures that he wanted to go in them. He is now six and it is still one of his most played-with toys!

Crafting items – for that next big project: playdough; special paints and brushes; card and paper or that specific pricier craft item they want that merits a special occasion.

Presents that tie in to a specific interest, even if they don’t really seem like a ‘traditional’ gift for a child. One year we got our daughter for her birthday just some ceramic plant pots, soil and a bunch of seeds and she was ecstatic.

As we get busier and busier, what our kids often want most is our time. I really like the idea of giving ‘experience vouchers’ to my kids this Christmas – with promises to be ‘cashed-in’ throughout the year, to go to a specific museum; day trip or attraction… or just an afternoon that will be entirely devoted to cookie-baking or crafting together.

We always buy a family film and board game each Christmas and are excited to get the chance each holiday to unwrap and watch/play the gift together.

Why don’t we buy branded items?

We tend to stay away from branded toys and clothes. Kid’s interests change wildly and that entire Peppa Pig matching bedroom set you got for your child is going to be out-of-date the minute they find a new favourite character. It’s always a good idea to go with more simple toys and nursery/bedroom equipment and add special accessories to make a theme – these are easier to change/upgrade and pass on to a younger sibling or friend. We might buy some specific toys for birthdays if they match a theme that has been ongoing for quite some time (especially if it is related to a favourite book series) – dragons and dinosaurs and anything animal-related have been big favourites in our house for quite some time!

Why we choose local and handmade

We try to ensure that a large proportion of the presents we gift our children (and their friends and relatives) will have been handmade by us – or locally by one of the many superb artisans and craftspeople working on this little island. Failing that, they will have at least been bought by a local small business like the ones here that are participating in our “12 Days to Christmas” Giveaway or these from our MiC Marketplace.

The last couple of years we have encouraged our kids to hand-make presents for each other and their cousins – this could be an activity book, or a story, a Christmas decoration or a toy. They have always made handmade cards for friends and relatives (handprint reindeers when they were little, working their way up to pop-up and more complicated cards as they have got older).

We always choose our favourite photos together and use these to make a photo-calendar each year for their Grandparents, who really look forward to receiving it each year.

Christmas is also about ‘giving’

We make sure to donate the previous year’s winter coats, shoes and clothes before Christmas to Kofinou Refugee Camp; the Red Cross and other local charities that provide for families in need within Limassol and Cyprus. The kids also each make up a gift box (by approximate age and gender) for the initiatives collecting each Christmas for disadvantaged children locally. Carine wrote a great blog post about the Reverse Advent calendar a few weeks back about how important it is to remember that Christmas is also about giving and how important it is to teach our children this – with some handy tips on how to try this in your own home this Christmas.

What are your guidelines for buying presents at Christmas and birthdays and do you have any good ideas to share with everyone else? Comment below…

If you haven’t entered our 12 Days to Christmas Giveaway yet, there is still time! Winners are being drawn every day now until December 21st, with all presents being delivered in time for Christmas! You can see what gifts we have got in our stocking and enter the draw here >> http://bit.ly/2SuCaMF

We are continuing with our series on reducing our plastic use through several small steps – simple recommendations that we can all implement at home and while out and about. Small steps that will hopefully change our mindsets about single plastic use but also significantly reduce our family plastic footprint over time.

These small steps would make a fun family project this summer… You could document how much less recycling/rubbish you are generating on a weekly basis! If you do, send over your pictures for us to post and help encourage other families to do the same!

Step 05: Takeaway Coffee Cups

Most disposable coffee cups end up in landfills, either because they are not being recycled or, more frustratingly, because they cannot be recycled.

Although disposable coffee cups are largely made of paper, to be waterproof and able to contain liquid they are lined with a layer of plastic polyethylene. This means that they cannot be recycled in standard recycling plants and instead must be taken to special facilities. The UK, for example, only has three such places in the entire country! This means that less than 1% of the disposable coffee cups used in the UK are being recycled. Considering that their population gets through an estimated 2.5 billion cups a year, that’s a hefty number of cups ending up in the landfills that will be sticking around for quite some time!

Clear plastic coffee cups like these used for smoothies, juices and frappes are commonly used here, especially in the summer months. At least they can be more easily recycled.

Many of the smaller and independent coffee stores and cafes are now choosing to use the more expensive but far more environmentally ethical coffee cups that can more easily be recycled or composted.

Reusable coffee cups have been around for some time and are now widely accepted in most coffee houses. In fact, most larger coffee chains sell their own branded versions. It’s a small change to make to your daily routine but once you get in to the habit of bringing your own cup, you will realise what an easy change it was to make.

You can also consider taking an extra 5 minutes to slow down, rest and dine in. Or some mornings, make your own coffee at home and bring it with you and you’ll be saving money as well as the planet!

How can we campaign for less packaging from shops that we buy from here and online? For a start, we can vote with our feet and our wallets!

Let’s start a revolution and take back the control of what we buy and consume!

It starts from home!

Please use these social media tags when sharing posts about reducing plastic use and help spread the word that change is needed.

Hard to believe the countdown to the holidays has started! Less than three weeks and schools will close, so if you still need some ideas on what to do with your children over the long summer, here’s our latest summer guide edition. On a different note, but equally useful, here’s your final chance to update your profile and stay in touch. Go to the full MiC Weekly Roundup here.

400 million tonnes of plastic! We use SO much plastic that we cannot keep up with the collection, storage, sorting and processing of our plastic waste. This week, it’s shocking news about plastic bags…

How to avoid skin cancer Summer has landed and so has the sun! Here’s what we can do to avoid getting sunburn, along with great info on how to keep healthy skin and reduce the cancer risks >>

The definitive soothers guide All soothers are created equal, right? Wrong! Everything you’ve always wanted to know about soothers but did not know who to ask! Right this way, please >>

Feeling lucky? Then enter our #WednesdayWin for this month’s amazing prizes! You will never run out of clean tap water with these counter-top water filters. Enter our draw >>

Continuing with our series on how to reduce our everyday plastic use, we wanted to introduce the idea of… Starting a Revolution!

Plastic Attack!

We can pressure manufacturers and shops in to using less packaging by simply not buying foods and products with excessive packaging! Small movements around the world, like this one in Bristol, have started cropping up everywhere and people are taking a stand against excessive use of packaging in their local stores.

You could even consider organising your own “Plastic Attack” with your friends to demonstrate at your local shop to take more responsibility over how they package and sell their food:

What else can I do?

Invest in some reusable produce bags or make your own, like these ones here. You just need some net/tulle and basic sewing skills: they can be washed and reused for years.

http://amandamedlin.com/2012/03/diy-reusable-produce-bags/

Buy only loose fruit and veg. Better still, shop local from small farms and cooperatives at your district’s weekly farmer’s market – all areas in Cyprus have at least one per week if not more.

Until you buy/make your own produce bags, use the paper bags that most shops provide for loose lentils and pulses – these can be reused a number of times and paper can be recycled more easily.

Buy eggs that come in carton boxes… or reuse your plastic eggs cartons and shop at local stores/fruiterias/bio-shops and markets that sell loose eggs. You’ll probably find that these eggs are more likely to also be organic or free-range and taste a lot better as well!

Buy in bulk/refillable packages as much as you can. Seeds, nuts, dried pulses and beans can easily be bought this way and you can buy larger refills of toiletries and household cleaning products. You can consider switching over to washing powder that comes in cardboard packaging rather than liquid clothes wash… or go back to using good old soap bars rather than liquid soap at home!

Consider making your own toiletries and cleaning products! There are plenty of ideas online using Castile soap and readily available ingredients such as lemons, vinegar and baking soda.

Switch over to shampoo bars rather than bottles and see what a difference it makes – they last a lot longer as well as being better for your skin and hair.

Bu less ready-made food and take-aways… You’ll probably find that you’ll be eating alot healthier this way also!

Make a deal with your local Ψησταριά (cooking house) or favourite take-away to let you bring your own containers to fill with their food.

Make a conscious use to buy consumables that have minimal packaging; paper or cardboard packaging or at least packaging that can easily be recycled.

Next week, we’ll be choosing a plastic product that you can find an easy non-plastic or reusable alternative for…

Until then, think about how you can campaign for less packaging from shops that you buy from and online… We can vote with our feet and our wallets!

Let’s start a revolution and take back the control of what we buy and consume!

Please use these social media tags when sharing posts about reducing plastic use and help spread the word that change is needed.

By recycling plastic, we can decrease the massive amount of plastic that is produced annually, while also saving the natural resources (oil, water and energy) that would be needed to produce new plastic.

However, RECYCLING IS NO LONGER ENOUGH! We use SO much plastic that we cannot keep up with the collection, storage, sorting and processing of our plastic waste! Only about 10% of the 400 million tonnes of plastic produced annually is recycled, with the rest ending up in landfills and the sea… There has to be another way to tackle this problem!

There are more than 50 different types of plastics, making it extremely difficult to sort and process

Not all plastics can be recycled

Not all areas have all the available technology needed to recycle plastic waste

The collection, storage, sorting and processing of plastic for recycling uses additional resources

A lot of recycling is shipped off to developing countries to be processed

The plastic that ends up in landfills leads to greenhouse gases being released as they break down and we have touched upon what happens to the plastic that ends up in our seas!

So rather than talking about recycling, we now understand that we need to be talking about… Reducing, Refusing and Reusing (or Re-purposing) our plastic use.

What other types of plastics can we refuse or reduce our use of?

For each step of this series, we are going to choose a different source of plastic present in our everyday lives and suggest an alternative.

You could even implement it as an educational home project with your kids and see how much plastic you can get rid of out of your weekly shop. By making a diary, you’ll be astounded by how much plastic you will have eliminated within a month or two just by taking some or all of these tiny steps!

Step 02: Plastic Bags!

Plastic Bags: A World Survey by www.reusethisbag.com

We are increasingly seeing pictures of land and marine animals entangled in plastic bags; animals often mistake plastic bags for food and nesting material leading to death by poisoning, asphyxiation and starvation dues to their stomachs filled with plastic. An article this week highlighted this problem, with the story of a whale off the coast of Thailand who died with 80 plastic bags in its stomach!

Apart from the growing danger that plastic bags pose to land and marine wildlife, the lightweight nature of plastic bags mean they easily blow out of trash and landfills, where among other things, they can clog up waterways and provide an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Plastic bags are also made of petroleum – a non-renewable resource and a polluting one at that!

So, what can I do?

Reducing your use of plastic bags is a pretty simple step to implement and is one of the first things being tackled Worldwide with country-level bans on plastic bags or ‘bag taxes’ being enforced in all shops. A new law came in to effect in Cyprus in January this year, banning free plastic bags in supermarkets with the introduction of a 0.05 cent levy on plastic bags at the checkout. However, while most shops offer customers the chance to buy a “bag for life”, many shops have ignored the ban by continuing to give out free plastic bags.

However, you don’t need to wait for these laws to come in to force in Cyprus before you take the plunge and invest in some reusable bags yourself! Start off small and notice the difference each week!

There are a great number of different “bags for life” that you can buy and take everywhere with you. Get your kids involved and don’t be surprised when they start reminding you to take them with you when you go shopping! We suggest buying fabric ones that can fold up neatly and fit in your handbag so that they are always with you and you can never forget them!

For food produce, net bags are fantastic – you can buy them in some shops locally and online – they last for absolutely ages, pack down small, are super strong and expand to fit a huge amount of items in them! We’ve had some for ten years now and they are still going strong – definitely worth the initial extra cost! Plus, they come in a variety of stylish, naturally dyed colours so your fashion sense as well as your wallet, won’t suffer!

For clothes and other shopping, reuse old paper bags or invest in some foldable fabric bags that you can wash and reuse easily – or perhaps make your own! There are so many different types available, in all colours and designs… they also great for presenting gifts in – if you buy the plain canvas ones, the kids can get creative and personalise them for you!

We are literally drowning in plastic!

Plastic bottles have been around since about the 1940s. A lot of the plastic produced since then still exists today; it takes hundreds of years for plastic to decompose – approximately 450 years for your average plastic water bottle. This means that the plastic water bottle you threw in the rubbish today will still be on this earth in the year 2468! Considering that no more than 10% of plastic produced annually is recycled – that is A LOT of plastic sticking around this planet, leaking its toxicity in to our groundwater and oceans for an extremely long time.

Top 10 most shocking plastic facts:

An estimated 400 million tonnes of plastic is produced each year worldwide. This is roughly the same as the entire weight of humanity

40% of this is single use (meaning it is only used once before being thrown away)

The majority of plastic bottles used across the globe are for drinking water.

We buy almost 20,000 plastic bottles every second – that’s more than a million plastic bottles being bought around the world every minute

If you placed the 480 billion plastic drinking bottles that were sold in 2016 across the world end to end, they would reach more than halfway to the sun.

Some plastics can take up to 1000 years to decompose! Your average plastic bottle takes 450 years to break down.

Not all plastics, such as PET / PETE, can be recycled.

Even though the majority of plastic bottles now produced for water and drinks are highly recyclable, the systems we have in place to collect, store, reuse and recycle these bottles cannot keep up: less than 10% of plastic produced is actually recycled. The rest is incinerated, littered or ends up in landfills – at an enormous cost to the environment, and human and wildlife health.

Approximately 10 million tonnes of plastic enters the world’s seas each year (mostly from illegal littering, dumping and plastic from landfills that blow in to our rivers and are carried in to the sea.

There are massive ‘gyres’ of floating plastic debris around the world, some as large as the state of Texas such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, leaching toxic chemicals in to the oceans and the smaller disintegrated particles being eaten by marine animals. Due to cyclones and currents, this plastic debris also ends up on the beaches of the furthest and most remote corners of the world, like here in Alaska.

Plastic and the world’s animals

Sinking plastics entangle marine creatures; plastic bags are mistaken for jellyfish by turtles and are ingested; smaller bits of plastic are ingested by marine creatures that die from starvation because their stomachs are filled by plastic, leaving no room for real food. We are only just starting to comprehend the toxicity of plastic in our oceans and how it is poisoning and killing creatures all over the globe.

Chris Jordan, Photographic Arts, is best known for his large-scale works depicting mass consumption and waste, particularly garbage. Chris’ recent work has focused on Midway Atoll, a remote cluster of islands more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent, where the detritus of our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place: inside the stomachs of thousands of dead baby albatrosses.

Plastics break down in to micro-plastics very quickly, even though it takes far longer for them to decompose entirely and these are eaten by sea creatures. This chemical load accumulates and concentrates the higher up the food chain we go: over two thirds of edible seafood and a third of fish that are served at our tables, contain plastic.

Plastic bottles and our money

The costs of producing plastics (oil, water and energy), the greenhouse emissions from the manufacture processes, as well as the transportation costs of bottled water are a hefty price to pay for something that is mostly used once and then discarded.

As for the cost to the consumer, bottled water adds up to quite considerable amounts over the course of one year. While the cost of bottled water is generally lower in Cyprus than other European countries, at a population level we tend to consume much larger amounts of bottled water per capita (hot, hot, hot summer ahead!).

Looking at the cost of bottled water consumption for an average family in Cyprus at a very conservative estimate, as a family you could get through 4 x 6packs of 1.5L water bottles a week: that would cost you approximately €500 a year (1248 bottles a year to be recycled/end up in a landfill)

That’s not including the single-use bottles you may buy at school, work or while out and about, and it does not include the bottled water you may use for other drinks (tea, coffee etc) and for cooking.

Plastic and our family’s health

Most people assume that because bottled water carries a price tag that it is safer and purer than tap water, but there have been a number of studies that have shown that bottled water can carry more contaminants than regular tap water.

A recent study in Canada found bacteria levels that exceeded the recommended safe limits in 70% of the water bottles they tested. In fact, the standards for tap water are more strictly controlled than that for bottled water: it is checked daily in terms of quality and contains all the minerals necessary for the human body. However, understandably, we also tend to have many concerns about the purity of tap water. To read more about this, go to our How To guide – ensure the water you are drinking is safe – here.

Another recent US study examining bottled water samples from nine different countries found that nearly all of them had microplastics (little bits of plastic) present in the water. We’re consuming this on a daily basis!

While there is still a lot of research to be undertaken in this area, there are huge concerns about the harmful effects upon us, the environment and wildlife from bisphenol A (BPA), bisphenol S (BPS), bisphenol F (BPF) and Phthalates present in plastic bottles and plastic packaging.

One of the most widely cited claims is that high levels of BPA lead to low birth weight in babies. The World Health Organisation has stated that there is insufficient evidence as yet linking plastic use to cancer but with a material that is used in every area of our home and wider environment, present in (made from, containing or packaged within) almost every product and consumables that we buy, further research is definitely warranted.

What kind of plastics are we using?

Experts recommend choosing plastic bottles with recycling code (2) when buying bottled water, because they’re probably the safest (and thus, contain the cleanest water) you can find on the bottled water market.

The next best bottles to use are those with the recycling codes (4) and (5) made from polyethylene and polypropylene – recommended as safe for limited use.

If you would like to be more careful, you should avoid drinks bottles that have the recycling codes (3) and (7). PVC (3) and polycarbonate (7) are the least safe of all plastics. (1) and (6) should also be avoided if possible.

It’s all quite complicated, isn’t it? Because you’ll also need to check that “BPA-free” water bottles made from number 5 do not have polycarbonate linings or mouthpieces.

The good news is that clear/opaque plastic is generally considered safer than coloured plastics, that may leach colouring agents in to your food and drink. And most bottled water we can find here in Cyprus comes in clear bottles.

Say YES to reducing plastic bottle usage

Drink tap water! It’s by far the safest and most affordable water.

To ensure the water quality you are drinking at home is the very best and safest it can be, the installation of a water filter in your home would be the best option.

Not only will you be cutting down substantially on your plastic use, you will also be saving money. We saw further up in our article that the average consumption cost of bottled water was around €500, remember? Well, the cost of an average water filter in your home works out considerably cheaper over a three-year period, even when you include the cost of installation, maintenance and replacement filters.

Say NO to plastic bottles when outside your home

For when you’re outside your home, another safe, economic and environmental option is to get reusable water bottles (preferably glass or stainless steel), which, with proper care can last for years.

In addition to their range of filter systems, Karma WaterShops also stock a large selection of the well-known brand SIGG for the entire family.

Refuse to have plastic water in cafes and restaurants – ask for glass bottles or, if you know and trust the establishment, ask to be served filtered tap water.

Reduce, Refuse, Reuse, Recycle and Repurpose. Be the change!

Ok, despite all that great advice there will inevitably be times when you end up buying plastic bottled water. For the times when you do, make sure to recycle them.

You can help to save the environment by keeping wasted plastics out of the landfills, air, and oceans as well as cut down on natural resource use to make new plastics.

We’ll be offering further solutions in future articles in our step-by-step How To guides to reducing your plastic use.

One encouraging news item is that China has announced that it will be banning foreign imports of plastic for reprocessing (most of our plastic waste burden is currently shipped off to various countries to be recycled for us – leaving them to deal with our problem). This, and the huge sway in public opinion since the release of Blue Planet II has forced our leaders to start taking notice. The European Commission has recently launched a strategy to take effect in 2030 that will make all plastic packaging reusable or recyclable and will ban single use plastic (such as plastic coffee cups) across Europe.

But before we finish, here are some tips on how to get creative at home with plastic.

For those old plastic bottles that you have lying around the house, you can always find a way to reuse or repurpose them:

This article was sponsored by Karma Water. It is through collaborations such as this with locally selected and trusted partners that enable Mums in Cyprus to continue to bring you the very best information and support that we can provide.